Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to support the field of Facilities Management
to take up the challenges and opportunities offered by the discourse of creativity. The
key focus of the paper is on the discursive nature of creative environments and on
the relation of facilities and facilitation. The paper explores four cases of different
scales and organisational contexts of creative environments.
Background: Demands for creative environments have become a central focus in
Western public and private businesses. Creativity has in particular been promoted as
a means of staying ahead in the competition with the growing economies in Asia, and
thus the perception of businesses being able to reinvent themselves and produce
innovative ideas are central to the economic thoughts in the western world. The
concept of creativity has become a main driver, not only in the creative industries, but
it is also constructed as an essential guideline by the managerial level in public
administration and business in general, producing a noticeable demand for
facilitating creative environments within these organizations.
Approach: The paper is based on the results from a research project on facilitating
creative environments, financed by the Danish Centre for Facilities Management –
Realdania Research. It presents case studies of four Danish creative environments,
analysing the development of the environment, the physical facilities, the facilitation
processes, the relationship between facilities and facilitation, and the use of the
facilities and the local interpretation of ”creativity”. Furthermore, it presents
theoretical perspectives on creativity from different fields of literature on creativity
(like Ericsson 2001) and urban planning (like Landry 2000). While the three cases
include more traditional work space, the fourth case includes an urban perspective
on creative environments
Results and practical implications: A central point in the lessons learned is the
need to abandon the focus on special rooms and office design as keys to facilitate
creative environments. Instead, broader perspectives on the organisation need to be
considered, including the concrete correlation between facilities, facilitation and
culture.